This book advocates for what it calls African American aesthetic abstractionism—a representational mode whereby an artwork, rather than striving for realist verisimilitude, vigorously asserts its ...
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This book advocates for what it calls African American aesthetic abstractionism—a representational mode whereby an artwork, rather than striving for realist verisimilitude, vigorously asserts its essentially artificial character. It argues that while realist representation potentially reaffirms the very social facts that it might have been understood to challenge (such as politically problematic racial regimes), abstractionism shows up the actual constructedness of those facts, thereby subjecting them to critical scrutiny and making them amenable to transformation. The book thus reconceives abstractive principles as a potential boon to African Americanist social critique, rather than as the antithesis to black cultural engagement that they are routinely taken to be. It further finds that literature is better able to serve an abstractionist function than either visual art or music, and that experimental prose is the literary genre within which abstractionism can be most critically effective. Ultimately then, the book argues for the displacement of realism as the primary mode of African American representational aesthetics, for the recentering of literature as a principal site of African American cultural politics, and for the elevation of experimental prose within the domain of African American literature. It makes its case by reviewing a variety of visual, musical, and literary works by artists such as Fred Wilson, Kara Walker, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Cecil Taylor, Ntozake Shange, Gloria Naylor, Alice Walker, and John Keene.Less

Abstractionist Aesthetics : Artistic Form and Social Critique in African American Culture

Phillip Brian Harper

Published in print: 2015-12-25

This book advocates for what it calls African American aesthetic abstractionism—a representational mode whereby an artwork, rather than striving for realist verisimilitude, vigorously asserts its essentially artificial character. It argues that while realist representation potentially reaffirms the very social facts that it might have been understood to challenge (such as politically problematic racial regimes), abstractionism shows up the actual constructedness of those facts, thereby subjecting them to critical scrutiny and making them amenable to transformation. The book thus reconceives abstractive principles as a potential boon to African Americanist social critique, rather than as the antithesis to black cultural engagement that they are routinely taken to be. It further finds that literature is better able to serve an abstractionist function than either visual art or music, and that experimental prose is the literary genre within which abstractionism can be most critically effective. Ultimately then, the book argues for the displacement of realism as the primary mode of African American representational aesthetics, for the recentering of literature as a principal site of African American cultural politics, and for the elevation of experimental prose within the domain of African American literature. It makes its case by reviewing a variety of visual, musical, and literary works by artists such as Fred Wilson, Kara Walker, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Cecil Taylor, Ntozake Shange, Gloria Naylor, Alice Walker, and John Keene.

The edited volume describes a multi-disciplinary model where students and faculty work with communities, learn from them, and contribute the fruits of theory and research to solving community ...
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The edited volume describes a multi-disciplinary model where students and faculty work with communities, learn from them, and contribute the fruits of theory and research to solving community problems. It is a model where theory and action span multiple ecological levels from individuals and small group to organizations and social structures. The communities of engagement range from local neighborhoods and schools to national policy and international development. These forms of engagement require carefully crafted institutional structures to support them. This volume offers examples of community-engaged theory, scholarship, and action, and the structures that foster them within a research university. The examples are drawn from the Department of Human and Organizational Development at Peabody College, Vanderbilt University, whose programs, from undergraduate service learning and internships to doctoral training in community research and action, embody the vision of The Academy in Action! The chapters document how authentic partnerships between the academy and the community result in meaningful research and praxis.Less

Academics in Action! : A Model for Community-Engaged Research, Teaching, and Service

Published in print: 2016-01-04

The edited volume describes a multi-disciplinary model where students and faculty work with communities, learn from them, and contribute the fruits of theory and research to solving community problems. It is a model where theory and action span multiple ecological levels from individuals and small group to organizations and social structures. The communities of engagement range from local neighborhoods and schools to national policy and international development. These forms of engagement require carefully crafted institutional structures to support them. This volume offers examples of community-engaged theory, scholarship, and action, and the structures that foster them within a research university. The examples are drawn from the Department of Human and Organizational Development at Peabody College, Vanderbilt University, whose programs, from undergraduate service learning and internships to doctoral training in community research and action, embody the vision of The Academy in Action! The chapters document how authentic partnerships between the academy and the community result in meaningful research and praxis.

Motivated by a growing need to address questions of transnationalism, female mobility, and citizenship, this book offers an in-depth study of selective texts of Audre Lorde (Barbadian-American), ...
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Motivated by a growing need to address questions of transnationalism, female mobility, and citizenship, this book offers an in-depth study of selective texts of Audre Lorde (Barbadian-American), Edwidge Danticat (Haitian-American), Maryse Condé (Guadeloupean-American) and Grace Nichols (Guyanese-British). The book examines transnational migration or movement not only in terms of physical journeys, but it also employs the trope of migration as resistance, as dissent. Examining the pervasive circulation of bodies, this book challenges the pathologization ascribed to black female sexuality/body, subverting its assumed definition as diseased, passive, and docile. Investigating how black female identities and sexualities circulate globally, it focuses on issues of embodiment, how women's bodies are read and seen; how bodies “perform” and are performed upon; how they challenge hierarchical constructs and disrupt normative standards. Furthermore, it depicts how female subjects not only discursively engender a parallel “migration” that disrupts and debunks hierarchical structures, but how they also engender a politics of resistance and subversion of mainstream/dominant discourse, a detour from normative categorizations and ideologies, a migration from and challenge of single, fixed, heteronormative, heterosexual definitions of self. In essence, it examines the politics and economics of migratory movements, re-examining and reconfiguring the definition of citizenship to reflect transnational movements and subjectivities, and the shifting definitions of home. The book's engagement with critical race theory, adds another layer to its uniqueness by engaging “disability” studies, albeit peripherally, as it challenges the construct of disease, wellness and able-bodiedness as configured by Western medical science.Less

Simone A. James Alexander

Published in print: 2014-05-27

Motivated by a growing need to address questions of transnationalism, female mobility, and citizenship, this book offers an in-depth study of selective texts of Audre Lorde (Barbadian-American), Edwidge Danticat (Haitian-American), Maryse Condé (Guadeloupean-American) and Grace Nichols (Guyanese-British). The book examines transnational migration or movement not only in terms of physical journeys, but it also employs the trope of migration as resistance, as dissent. Examining the pervasive circulation of bodies, this book challenges the pathologization ascribed to black female sexuality/body, subverting its assumed definition as diseased, passive, and docile. Investigating how black female identities and sexualities circulate globally, it focuses on issues of embodiment, how women's bodies are read and seen; how bodies “perform” and are performed upon; how they challenge hierarchical constructs and disrupt normative standards. Furthermore, it depicts how female subjects not only discursively engender a parallel “migration” that disrupts and debunks hierarchical structures, but how they also engender a politics of resistance and subversion of mainstream/dominant discourse, a detour from normative categorizations and ideologies, a migration from and challenge of single, fixed, heteronormative, heterosexual definitions of self. In essence, it examines the politics and economics of migratory movements, re-examining and reconfiguring the definition of citizenship to reflect transnational movements and subjectivities, and the shifting definitions of home. The book's engagement with critical race theory, adds another layer to its uniqueness by engaging “disability” studies, albeit peripherally, as it challenges the construct of disease, wellness and able-bodiedness as configured by Western medical science.

This volume brings together scholars of childhood, adulthood, and old age to explore how and why particular ages—such as sixteen, twenty-one, and sixty-five—have come to define the rights and ...
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This volume brings together scholars of childhood, adulthood, and old age to explore how and why particular ages—such as sixteen, twenty-one, and sixty-five—have come to define the rights and obligations of American citizens. From the colonial period to the present, Americans have relied on chronological age to determine matters as diverse as who can cast a vote, marry, buy a drink, or qualify for a pension. Contributors to this volume explore what meanings people in the past ascribed to specific ages and whether or not earlier Americans believed the same things about particular ages as we do. The means by which Americans imposed chronological boundaries upon the ongoing and variable process of growing up and growing old offers a paradigmatic example of how people construct cultural meaning and social hierarchy from embodied experience. Further, as the contributors to this volume argue, chronological age always intersects with other socially constructed categories such as gender, race, and sexuality. What makes age different from other categories such as whiteness and maleness is that, if we are lucky to live long enough, we will all pass through the chronological markers that define us as first young, then middle aged, and finally old.Less

Age in America : The Colonial Era to the Present

Published in print: 2015-05-22

This volume brings together scholars of childhood, adulthood, and old age to explore how and why particular ages—such as sixteen, twenty-one, and sixty-five—have come to define the rights and obligations of American citizens. From the colonial period to the present, Americans have relied on chronological age to determine matters as diverse as who can cast a vote, marry, buy a drink, or qualify for a pension. Contributors to this volume explore what meanings people in the past ascribed to specific ages and whether or not earlier Americans believed the same things about particular ages as we do. The means by which Americans imposed chronological boundaries upon the ongoing and variable process of growing up and growing old offers a paradigmatic example of how people construct cultural meaning and social hierarchy from embodied experience. Further, as the contributors to this volume argue, chronological age always intersects with other socially constructed categories such as gender, race, and sexuality. What makes age different from other categories such as whiteness and maleness is that, if we are lucky to live long enough, we will all pass through the chronological markers that define us as first young, then middle aged, and finally old.

Seeking to better understand what it means to grow older in contemporary Britain from the perspective of older people themselves, this richly detailed ethnographic study engages in debates over ...
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Seeking to better understand what it means to grow older in contemporary Britain from the perspective of older people themselves, this richly detailed ethnographic study engages in debates over selfhood and people’s relationships with time. Based on research conducted in an English former coal mining village, the book focuses on the everyday experiences of older people living there. It explores how the category of old age comes to be assigned and experienced in daily life through multiple registers of interaction. These include ‘memory work’ about people, places and webs of relations in a postindustrial setting that has undergone profound social transformation. Challenging both the notion of a homogenous relationship with time across generations and the idea of a universalised middle-aged self, the author argues that the complex interplay of social, cultural and physical attributes of ageing means that older people can come to occupy a different position in relation to time and to the self than younger people. This account provides fascinating insight into what is at stake for the ageing self in regards to how people come to know, experience and dwell in the world. It describes the ways in which these distinctive forms of temporality and narrativity also come to be used against older people, denigrated socially in some contexts as ‘less-than-fully adult’. This text will be of great interest to researchers and students in anthropology, sociology, human geography and social gerontology working on interests in selfhood, time, memory, the anthropology of Britain and the lived experience of social change.Less

Ageing selves and everyday life in the north of England : Years in the making

Cathrine Degnen

Published in print: 2012-10-01

Seeking to better understand what it means to grow older in contemporary Britain from the perspective of older people themselves, this richly detailed ethnographic study engages in debates over selfhood and people’s relationships with time. Based on research conducted in an English former coal mining village, the book focuses on the everyday experiences of older people living there. It explores how the category of old age comes to be assigned and experienced in daily life through multiple registers of interaction. These include ‘memory work’ about people, places and webs of relations in a postindustrial setting that has undergone profound social transformation. Challenging both the notion of a homogenous relationship with time across generations and the idea of a universalised middle-aged self, the author argues that the complex interplay of social, cultural and physical attributes of ageing means that older people can come to occupy a different position in relation to time and to the self than younger people. This account provides fascinating insight into what is at stake for the ageing self in regards to how people come to know, experience and dwell in the world. It describes the ways in which these distinctive forms of temporality and narrativity also come to be used against older people, denigrated socially in some contexts as ‘less-than-fully adult’. This text will be of great interest to researchers and students in anthropology, sociology, human geography and social gerontology working on interests in selfhood, time, memory, the anthropology of Britain and the lived experience of social change.

This book examines representations of Arabs, Islam, and the Near East in nineteenth-century American culture, arguing that these representations play a significant role in the development of American ...
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This book examines representations of Arabs, Islam, and the Near East in nineteenth-century American culture, arguing that these representations play a significant role in the development of American national identity over the century, revealing largely unexplored exchanges between these two cultural traditions that will alter how we understand them today. Moving from the period of America's engagement in the Barbary Wars through the Holy Land travel mania in the years of Jacksonian expansion and into the writings of romantics such as Edgar Allan Poe, the book argues that not only were Arabs and Muslims prominently featured in nineteenth-century literature, but that the differences that writers established between figures such as Moors, Bedouins, Turks and Orientals provide proof of the transnational scope of domestic racial politics. Drawing on both English and Arabic language sources, the book contends that the fluidity and instability of the term Arab as it appears in captivity narratives, travel narratives, imaginative literature, and ethnic literature simultaneously instantiate and undermine definitions of the American nation and American citizenship.Less

American Arabesque : Arabs and Islam in the Nineteenth Century Imaginary

Jacob Rama Berman

Published in print: 2012-06-11

This book examines representations of Arabs, Islam, and the Near East in nineteenth-century American culture, arguing that these representations play a significant role in the development of American national identity over the century, revealing largely unexplored exchanges between these two cultural traditions that will alter how we understand them today. Moving from the period of America's engagement in the Barbary Wars through the Holy Land travel mania in the years of Jacksonian expansion and into the writings of romantics such as Edgar Allan Poe, the book argues that not only were Arabs and Muslims prominently featured in nineteenth-century literature, but that the differences that writers established between figures such as Moors, Bedouins, Turks and Orientals provide proof of the transnational scope of domestic racial politics. Drawing on both English and Arabic language sources, the book contends that the fluidity and instability of the term Arab as it appears in captivity narratives, travel narratives, imaginative literature, and ethnic literature simultaneously instantiate and undermine definitions of the American nation and American citizenship.

This volume considers the changing patterns of American thought and culture in its transition into the early twenty-first century. One of the questions this book tackles is whether the twenty-first ...
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This volume considers the changing patterns of American thought and culture in its transition into the early twenty-first century. One of the questions this book tackles is whether the twenty-first century will prove to be ‘the next American century’, or one in which challenges to the structure of nation-states will radically transform the status, prestige and global role of the United States. The study is stimulated by two perceived turning points in American life: the political swing back towards the right represented by the election of George W. Bush in November 2000 and the attacks of 11 September 2001. The 18 chapters address domestic American issues, but also the place of the United States within a broader global narrative of commerce, cultural exchange, international diplomacy, ideological conflict, terrorism and war. The contributors to this volume take both long and short historical views of shifting intellectual trends and cultural patterns: comparing contemporary issues with the climate of the 1990s, but also looking back to earlier twentieth-century moments and concerns. In addition to assessing specific challenges arising in recent years, contributors address emerging issues and points of intensification that are likely to take effect in future years. The book has a thematic structure and is divided into three sections, dealing in turn with Politics, Society and Culture, and covering a wide span of topics that address issues of nationhood, globalization, ideology and cultural representation.Less

American Thought and Culture in the 21st Century

Published in print: 2008-10-07

This volume considers the changing patterns of American thought and culture in its transition into the early twenty-first century. One of the questions this book tackles is whether the twenty-first century will prove to be ‘the next American century’, or one in which challenges to the structure of nation-states will radically transform the status, prestige and global role of the United States. The study is stimulated by two perceived turning points in American life: the political swing back towards the right represented by the election of George W. Bush in November 2000 and the attacks of 11 September 2001. The 18 chapters address domestic American issues, but also the place of the United States within a broader global narrative of commerce, cultural exchange, international diplomacy, ideological conflict, terrorism and war. The contributors to this volume take both long and short historical views of shifting intellectual trends and cultural patterns: comparing contemporary issues with the climate of the 1990s, but also looking back to earlier twentieth-century moments and concerns. In addition to assessing specific challenges arising in recent years, contributors address emerging issues and points of intensification that are likely to take effect in future years. The book has a thematic structure and is divided into three sections, dealing in turn with Politics, Society and Culture, and covering a wide span of topics that address issues of nationhood, globalization, ideology and cultural representation.

Lawrence Alloway (1926–1990) was one of the most influential and widely respected (as well as prolific) art writers of the post-war years. His many books, catalogue essays, and reviews manifest the ...
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Lawrence Alloway (1926–1990) was one of the most influential and widely respected (as well as prolific) art writers of the post-war years. His many books, catalogue essays, and reviews manifest the changing paradigms of art away from the formal values of modernism towards the inclusiveness of the visual culture model in the 1950s, through the diversity and excesses of the 1960s, to the politicisation in the wake of 1968 and the Vietnam War, on to postmodern concerns in the 1970s. Alloway was in the right places at the right times. From his central involvement with the Independent Group and the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London in the 1950s, he moved to New York, the new world centre of art, at the beginning of the 1960s. In the early 1970s Alloway became deeply involved with the realist revival and the early feminist movement in art — Sylvia Sleigh, the painter, was his wife — and went on to write extensively about the gallery and art market as a system, examining the critic's role within this system. Positioning himself against the formalism and exclusivism associated with Clement Greenberg, Alloway was wholeheartedly committed to pluralism and diversity in both art and society. For him, art and criticism were always to be understood within a wider set of cultural, social and political concerns, with the emphasis on democracy, social inclusiveness and freedom of expression. This book provides a close critical reading of Alloway's writings.Less

Art and Pluralism : Lawrence Alloway's Cultural Criticism

Nigel Whiteley

Published in print: 2012-08-03

Lawrence Alloway (1926–1990) was one of the most influential and widely respected (as well as prolific) art writers of the post-war years. His many books, catalogue essays, and reviews manifest the changing paradigms of art away from the formal values of modernism towards the inclusiveness of the visual culture model in the 1950s, through the diversity and excesses of the 1960s, to the politicisation in the wake of 1968 and the Vietnam War, on to postmodern concerns in the 1970s. Alloway was in the right places at the right times. From his central involvement with the Independent Group and the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London in the 1950s, he moved to New York, the new world centre of art, at the beginning of the 1960s. In the early 1970s Alloway became deeply involved with the realist revival and the early feminist movement in art — Sylvia Sleigh, the painter, was his wife — and went on to write extensively about the gallery and art market as a system, examining the critic's role within this system. Positioning himself against the formalism and exclusivism associated with Clement Greenberg, Alloway was wholeheartedly committed to pluralism and diversity in both art and society. For him, art and criticism were always to be understood within a wider set of cultural, social and political concerns, with the emphasis on democracy, social inclusiveness and freedom of expression. This book provides a close critical reading of Alloway's writings.

On December 8, 1941, artist Yasuo Kuniyoshi (1889–1953) awoke to find himself branded an “enemy alien” by the U.S. government in the aftermath of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. The historical crisis ...
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On December 8, 1941, artist Yasuo Kuniyoshi (1889–1953) awoke to find himself branded an “enemy alien” by the U.S. government in the aftermath of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. The historical crisis forced Kuniyoshi to rethink his pictorial strategies and to confront questions of loyalty, assimilation, national and racial identity that he had carefully avoided in his prewar art. As an immigrant who had proclaimed himself to be as “American as the next fellow,” the realization of his now fractured and precarious status catalyzed the development of an emphatic and conscious identity construct that would underlie Kuniyoshi's art and public image for the remainder of his life. This book offers an analysis of Kuniyoshi's pivotal works. It examines Kuniyoshi's imagery and writings as vital means for him to engage, albeit often reluctantly and ambivalently, in discussions about American democracy and ideals at a time when racial and national origins were grounds for mass incarceration and discrimination. The book also investigates the activities of Americans of Japanese descent outside the internment camps and the intense pressures with which they had to deal in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. It foregrounds broader historical debates of what constituted American art and illuminates the complicating factors of race, diasporas, and ideology in the construction of an American cultural identity. The book historicizes and elucidates the ways in which “minority” artists have been, and continue to be, both championed and marginalized for their cultural and ethnic “difference” within the twentieth-century American art canon.Less

Becoming American? The Art and Identity Crisis of Yasuo Kuniyoshi

ShiPu Wang

Published in print: 2011-05-31

On December 8, 1941, artist Yasuo Kuniyoshi (1889–1953) awoke to find himself branded an “enemy alien” by the U.S. government in the aftermath of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. The historical crisis forced Kuniyoshi to rethink his pictorial strategies and to confront questions of loyalty, assimilation, national and racial identity that he had carefully avoided in his prewar art. As an immigrant who had proclaimed himself to be as “American as the next fellow,” the realization of his now fractured and precarious status catalyzed the development of an emphatic and conscious identity construct that would underlie Kuniyoshi's art and public image for the remainder of his life. This book offers an analysis of Kuniyoshi's pivotal works. It examines Kuniyoshi's imagery and writings as vital means for him to engage, albeit often reluctantly and ambivalently, in discussions about American democracy and ideals at a time when racial and national origins were grounds for mass incarceration and discrimination. The book also investigates the activities of Americans of Japanese descent outside the internment camps and the intense pressures with which they had to deal in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. It foregrounds broader historical debates of what constituted American art and illuminates the complicating factors of race, diasporas, and ideology in the construction of an American cultural identity. The book historicizes and elucidates the ways in which “minority” artists have been, and continue to be, both championed and marginalized for their cultural and ethnic “difference” within the twentieth-century American art canon.

Written by New Yorker’s inimitable first pop music critic, this book presents the perspective of a radical and rational political realm, to look at rock-and-roll, sexuality, and above all, freedom. ...
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Written by New Yorker’s inimitable first pop music critic, this book presents the perspective of a radical and rational political realm, to look at rock-and-roll, sexuality, and above all, freedom. Here the text captures the thrill of music, the disdain of authoritarian culture, and the rebellious spirit of the 1960s and 1970s.Less

Beginning to See the Light : Sex, Hope, and Rock-and-Roll

Ellen Willis

Published in print: 2012-07-01

Written by New Yorker’s inimitable first pop music critic, this book presents the perspective of a radical and rational political realm, to look at rock-and-roll, sexuality, and above all, freedom. Here the text captures the thrill of music, the disdain of authoritarian culture, and the rebellious spirit of the 1960s and 1970s.